Often, our home life and family life gets the short end of the stick. After a long day at work, we get home with little energy to devote to our loved ones and our own dreams, individually and together. Here is a way to give your family the type of quality attention that we often only give to work or outside volunteer and community efforts. Regardless of what your family looks like or believes in, you will be able to strengthen your family using the following framework and tips:

1. Communication

Communicate. Learn some basic skills in how to communicate with compassion. Schedule times to talk together as a family, to share ideas, dreams and challenges. Make sure you take the time to listen to each other, spend fun time together and connect.

(Communication: Speaking with honesty, listening with empathy, connecting, sharing and making plans together)

2. Values

Define your values as a family. What’s most important to each family member and to your family collectively? Identify and list your values.

(Values: A set of agreed upon principles, qualities and beliefs that guide our decisions and actions as a family)

3. Agreements

Talk about how you want to agree to behave in your family.

(Agreements: A living set of guidelines that we, as a family, agree to follow)

4. Traditions

Talk about your traditions as a family. Name them. Are there any you want to discontinue? Are there new ones you’d like to adopt?

(Traditions: Chosen practices that create a sense of belonging, connection and structure that help hold our family together.)

5. Identity

Create a family logo or crest that expresses who you are as a family. Is there also a song, a poem, a certain food or style that represents your family?

(Identify: Our character and personality as a family)

6. Purpose

Define your purpose as a family. How can you make a difference together?

(Purpose: A statement that expresses what we hope to achieve together as a family)

7. Vision

Create a picture of your future. Imagine that it’s a year from now, or three years from now: what will your life look like ideally? Share your dreams with each other.

(Vision: A clear and compelling description of our family’s future)

8. Operations

Evaluate how your day-to-day life runs as a family. Recognize all of the many tasks that are required on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. Are there any areas that need attention? How can you improve those areas?

(Operations: How we manage day-to-day tasks)

9. Contributions

Identify who is responsible for which of the many tasks we need to complete as a family. Talk about how everyone can pitch in.

(Contributions: Working together to keep our family running smoothly)

10. Appreciation

Take turns on paper or talking out loud to let each member of the family know what you appreciate about them.

(Appreciation: Recognizing each family member and expressing gratitude)

These concepts are further discussed in “The Family ROI Experience: A Step-by-Step Guide to Realizing Your Best Family,” now available on Amazon.

The Family ROI Experience: A Step-by-Step Guide to Realizing Your Best Family. This book, and the Family ROI Experience within it, is a non-profit venture with the goal of helping families around the world grow stronger. I have used this program to strengthen my own family, and have spent years of donated time and resources creating this exciting program, along with a talented team, to pass on to others.

The New Zealand Government’s Families Commission has also embraced the Family ROI Experience program, and is using it with families across the country now.

I believe that families, in all their shapes and sizes, are the foundation of every community. Ideally, our families provide a safe harbor for each individual to develop, grow and ultimately contribute to society. If our families are strong, our communities are strong and the world will be a better place. That is our vision.

The Family ROI Experience is designed to provide structure and focus to the intentional development of families. We draw from best practices used in organizations and apply them with a family friendly touch. The feedback from families who have experienced this program is tremendously positive.

Wishing you a wonderful family life!!

Barbara

As pioneers of the virtual work environment, ROI has been a leader in what it takes to build a collaborative culture of consultants. In a similar way, Salesforce.com has been pioneering the tools to make collaboration happen.

I had the opportunity to hear Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, at a recent conference in San Francisco and was inspired by his comments on the “future of work”. During the course of an all-too-short 20 minutes at Giga OM’s first Net:work event, he shared an unexpected point-of-view. The agenda was packed with discussions about collaboration products, cloud computing and IT solutions. As one of the hottest software products and services around, what was surprising was that his vision – and in this venue – was not about technology. It was about people.

Today, it’s getting far too easy for leaders to hide behind technology and ignore the importance of engaging their employees on a personal, human level.  More than ever we need agile leaders who can build a culture of trust in virtual environments, are curious about their employees at all levels of the organization, and are open to learning from them. Benioff shared an example of how Salesforce engaged their employees in the annual strategic planning session for the company by using a host of collaboration tools and face-to-face interaction. The ideas were plentiful from across the organization and the result was a robust plan. And, it sounded like they had a lot of fun doing it.

Businesses today need leaders who are willing to experiment with flatter organizational structures and push forward new ways of working. We need leaders who can connect and inspire their employees. When done right, that inspiration can result in higher retention, better work product and bottom line benefits. By nature, Benioff is a risk taker and an innovator, he’s transparent – what you see is what you get – and he’s a leader, whether you like his style or not. We need more leaders like Marc Benioff.

(Note: ROI Communication uses Salesforce.com products)

As professionals we sometimes forget the simplest truth about communication. At its most basic level, it is really about human connections. I’m reminded of this fact as I anticipate our annual family vacation on the Maine coast this and every August. A college roommate used to say that this was the best part of any vacation—the simple anticipation of the joy ahead. When we were getting ready to go home for Christmas or the summer ahead in the hasty, stressful days of preparation and exams, he would always say, “Rog, enjoy it now. This is the best part because once the vacation starts, it’s almost over.”

At first I thought that his insight was pessimistic. Through the years, however, I learned that there was a wisdom in his view that the anticipation is the real source of pleasure. But that’s usually not true of our family gathering of 17 of us, including our adult children, their spouses and 7 grandchildren in a network of cottages where after all these years we are regarded as more than ‘summah people.’

What has always been so great about this time is that we can totally disconnect from modern technology because our cottages are completely outside of the range of high-speed—or even low-speed—connections. In the beginning our cottage didn’t even have what we now call a land line. The only potential intruder is the FedEx driver, whose services we usually manage to ignore.

The absence of such things when the kids were small forced us to talk and to listen to one another’s ideas, visions, aspirations and fears. Over a game of Old Maid or Monopoly, we had plenty of time to ‘commune,’ which my dictionary defines so well as ‘to communicate intimately.’ Those times cemented relationships that are so deep in every one of our hearts that we find it unthinkable to not return each year, regardless of how we are now scattered or how busy our lives might otherwise be.

Today Old Maid has given way to long adult dinners at one or other of the network of cottages we occupy. But the games continue for the second generation of kids for whom the trip to Maine is as treasured as it used to be for their parents, who counted the intervening days until we packed up the car in terms of the number of ‘sleeps’ remaining until we began the long drive.

In the cottage my wife and I occupy there is a tradition we have faithfully honored for 40 summers. The original owners, now long deceased, and their surviving son have always kept a logbook handy for their various guests to record their experiences in the cottage that sits prominently on a rocky ledge 20 or 30 feet above the waves that alternately retreat, collide, foam and throw an occasional spray high against the rocks. The stack of old logbooks is a testament to the magic of the place and a communication of the comings and goings of family members from childhood to college to jobs to marriages and births. Only happy thoughts are recorded in the log book. There is no formal prohibition, but the communications are touching, thoughtful and often wistful for such a simple existence.

My long ago roommate was right. This is the best time because it’s full of anticipation without the realization that the actual days will fly faster than we ever want. But oh the communication!

I came upon an interesting post the other day on the CRM Learning blog titled The Myth of Generational Workforce in the Workplace. The blog post reviewed new research on the multigenerational workforce by Jennifer J. Deal, a research scientist with the Center for Creative Leadership.

Deal argues that the stereotypes associated with the different generations are just that. After surveying more than 3,000 corporate leaders for her book Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young & Old Can Find Common Ground, she found that all generations of working age value the same things – family, respect, leaders who are trustworthy, opportunity to learn, and feedback.

While this may not surprise any member of the four generations in the workforce today, what may surprise at least some is what Deal found out about how the different generations react to change. Her research indicated that resistance or acceptance of change had less to do with age and more to do with what personal impact the change would have on the individual.

The CRM Learning blog quotes Deal, “The so-called generation gap is, in large part, the result of miscommunication and misunderstanding, fueled by common insecurities and desire for clout.”

Sounds like a fairly easy fix then, right? Just improve communication, create a more open environment where employees can express their concerns, and find ways to ensure that promotions occur with a consideration as to their affect beyond the individual being promoted. But wait…aren’t those steps management experts have been espousing for at least the last two decades?

Evidently, the old adage “the more the world changes, the more it stays the same” continues to be valid today; regardless of what generation you belong to.

In my last blog I suggested that we were unlikely to see the fulfillment of a vision of full corporate democracy imagined by a new generation of anti-authority Internet bloggers. Their dream is of the end of corporate hierarchy and autocracy to be replaced by consultation and the flowering of social media that presumably will influence, if not drive, leadership action and behavior. But that vision seldom gets articulated clearly, and one is left to imagine what the new age will look like.

No doubt the digital age that is truly in its infancy will inevitably have a profound impact on the communication style and behavior of today’s organizations. The growing interest and actual creation of internal social media is one of the hottest trends in our profession today. Not every organization is joining in, but the degree of interest reflected in various communication publications and meetings is intense. Social media alone, however, are not sufficient in the drive to open communication cultures.

The earliest adapters of greater openness seem to be the usual suspects—those organizations that are on the leading edge of all things new and novel. It’s a good bet that if there is going to be a significant movement to greater employee inclusion and openness that it will happen in these companies first. They are the leading candidates to create any movement toward less hierarchy and greater inclusion and collaboration.

Predictably, they will also continue to have as their imitators those companies that are receptive to new trends but that are not necessarily pioneers. They too fall in the category of early adapters. In both cases, they will for a time be in the minority as companies contemplate the benefits and risks of greater openness.

That leaves most of the remaining organizations today in a range of positions from heightened awareness of the potential opportunities posed by the digital age to caution occasioned by the perceived risks of openness. A small minority of the late adapters will continue to resist openness at every turn and to rely on spin and failed attempts at information control.

In the end what is likely to create movement toward open communication cultures are two forces. The first is the obvious one of the irresistibility of the information revolution powered by ubiquitous digital technology. The other is perhaps less obvious. It will be the eventual ability of our profession to connect all the dots and to create integrated information strategies that will knit together social media, the need for innovation and collaboration, and the strong business case for openness. That case is increasingly evident from a variety of respected researchers. It remains for us to do our job and to integrate the moving parts in a compelling fashion.

Imagine this workplace scenario. You work for a company run by a member of the Silent Generation – those born between 1925 and 1944. Let’s say he or she is in their late 60s or early 70s.  You are in your late 30s, which makes you a member of Generation X, and you are managed by a member of the baby boomer set; let’s say someone in their late 40s.  You manage several staff who are in their early to mid-20s or Gen Y-ers.  That may sound typical, following what would normally have occurred in a fairly traditional company.

In fact, according to a Career Builder Survey, this scenario, as typical as it may sound, is actually far from typical.  That survey found 43 percent of workers ages 35 and older currently work for younger bosses, as do 53 percent of workers ages 45 and up, and 69 percent of workers who are 55 or older. That means not only are Baby Boomers being managed by Gen X or Gen Y, but sometimes the age gap can even result in a Gen X-er reporting to a Millennial manager.

What this has done has created some very unique management challenges. In particular, the survey also found that a significant percentage of workers (16 percent) who were 25 to 34 said they found it difficult to take direction from a younger boss, but only five percent of workers age 55 and up had problems with it.

Complaints about younger managers run the gamut and include micromanagement, a sense of entitlement, favoritism with younger colleagues, and not giving enough direction. Sound familiar?

These are age old and ageless management problems that people with advanced degrees, colleges with massive research budgets, and consultants with $500/hour billing rates have been trying to solve since some guy managing the fire told another guy to go get more wood.

It should be no surprise that you could be managing people who may not like you or you could be managed by a boss you believe doesn’t deserve his or her position. Most of us have or will be in one of these situations at some point in our career. Rather than fight either situation, imagine an alternative one where the tables could be turned—you’re the younger boss managing an employee either close to your age or much older, or you’re the one being managed. Then do everything you can to be the manager who’d get you to do your best work and the employee who’d do the best work for you. That isn’t a multi-step process, but it’s one many people of all ages have trouble taking the first step toward.

A very interesting trend has emerged in internal communication circles over the last several years. It’s the formation of a group of professional communicators who are ardently anti-hierarchical in their thinking and philosophy. For the most part their position has been shaped by the politics and viewpoint of Internet bloggers, who believe that organizations will only thrive to the extent that they become more democratic in their thinking and functioning. And who see the validity of one’s opinions based not on position in a hierarchy or seniority but rather on logic, careful reasoning and independent thinking. With more than a little legitimacy, they claim that the bureaucratic business model, topped by a hierarchy of senior leaders and line managers in descending order of position power, is obsolete in a fast-paced economy.

Their faith is in the wisdom of teams and the good intentions of corporate citizens. But to put it bluntly, many of them also seem to have an authority hang-up, a not uncommon perspective in Western countries with well-developed economies and long histories of relative prosperity. It’s also not surprising that well-educated workers with other options would chaff a bit under arbitrary decision-making by people who are used to having their directives obeyed and their privileges reserved.

But in the end, the hard truth is that someone has to be in charge and take responsibility for results. That makes some degree of hierarchy, regardless of how we soften it or label it, inevitable. The debate—if we can call it that—between corporate democracy and corporate hierarchy is cast in terms that are too black and white, too much ‘the good guys versus the bad guys.’

In an earlier version of this debate some years ago, there was a school of thought that argued that internal communication professionals should be permitted to play the role of investigative journalists in their organizations. The idea was that they would be given the democratic freedom to report events as they saw them, without review and with as much objectivity as their brothers and sisters in the public media. Not surprisingly, there were few, if any, senior leaders willing to fund a free press within their walls. So that particular discussion went nowhere although it did open things up a bit and make people more self-conscious about obvious spin in their communications.

No doubt the dialogue that is pervasive on the Internet and that is being advocated as healthy in the context of corporate social media will tend to influence more candid and more inclusive internal communication. But as the corporate autocrats used to complain as they contemplated, first, participative management, and later, employee engagement, “You think we’re going to sit around and take a vote on every decision?” The hard truth is that it’s highly unlikely any of us will ever see that day. More inclusion? Yes. More consultation? Yes. But outright corporate democracy and the end of hierarchy?  I wouldn’t put any money on it.

A few days ago I had the exhilarating experience of meeting with four colleagues in a two-day, brainstorming session. The members of the group have known each other for years as colleagues and even as competitors, so this was a group with a common history.

Our subject was differentiation in what has become a crowded profession. We spent a lot of time reflecting on the rather unsurprising premise that consulting is fundamentally about human relationships—personal relationships between the consultant and his or her clients and corporate relationships with customers, shareholders, communities and all of the other constituents that leaders care about.

The insights that flowed from that premise were informative, but what really struck me was the magic of a face-to-face conversation among five highly experienced and caring people. I was reminded once again that there is no virtual substitute for the dynamics of a face-to-face experience. There’s no way to capture the tone of voice, body language, energy, or enthusiastic interruptions for different ideas careening around the room. With the right participants wrestling with an important subject, meeting in person is an intellectual experience without equal.

The use of technology in today’s corporate environment has created a manic necessity for instant decisions and input, leaving us little time for such valuable face-to-face interludes. Instead, we conference call, email and text or tweet our half-formed thoughts as though these terms really were action verbs instead of nouns.

Clearly, the technology train has left the station. Although there’s probably little chance of going back to a more reflective time we should make time for face-to-face conversations in between rapid-fire messaging. Based on what I recently experienced, in-person conversations are not only useful for relationship building and productive outcomes, but they’re more efficient than you might think.

Anyone out there want to take a guess at how many entries you’ll get if you google “multi-generational workforce?” Try over 450,000. Sure, that’s not the over 20 million you’ll get by googling Lindsay Lohan, but it is an amount worth tweeting about.

As I read through some of the blog posts that come up, I wonder whether or not any of the entities writing, consulting and complaining about this phenomenon have actually spent any time in a multi-generational workplace. Most of the contributors categorize baby boomers as the “me” generation, Gen Xers as the cynical generation, and the Millenials or Echo Boomers with
every term related to super-connectivity which leads me to believe that the closest they’ve gotten to “multi-generational” experience is their last family reunion.

I’m not criticizing the labels as much as I’m pointing out that what’s really driving the differences within the workforce is not just chronological age, but the speed and willingness of technology adoption at the individual level, regardless of how old we are.

My dad is in his mid-70s and spends more time on his computer with an ease that I never thought would be possible 20 years ago. He has multiple email  accounts, a Facebook page, and a large library of music. Yet, I have heard of CEOs in their 40s who still don’t quite get the concept of email — they ask their assistants to print them out for them — and certainly don’t understand Twitter, Facebook or even LinkedIn.  I’ve met 20-somethings who have sworn off as much social networking as they feel they can get away with, and 30-somethings who wouldn’t know how to live without their smartphone for a day.   Yet all of these people could very well work in the
same place together, separated or united as much by their affinity and adoption for the technology du jour as they are by their expectation of how they are managed and rewarded.

As with any issue, the multi-generational workforce is one that has multiple points of view and varied dynamics.  The sooner we realize that age is not the only factor, and possibly not even the deciding one, the more likely we can start making this unique and historical situation work instead of working to make it unique.